PALESTINE supporters mobilised in their thousands across more than 20 towns and cities across Britain on Saturday, including at eight protests in the capital.

Outside University College in London, hundreds of Palestine protesters were faced by a small mixed gang of zionists and far-right extremists, some waving union flags stitched with the Star of David.

Police lined either side of the street.

In Manchester, children from Palestine were among youngsters who led a march of around 2,000 through the city to a “Camp of Resistance” established almost four weeks ago by Manchester University students.

Students also occupied Manchester University’s Whitworth Hall building on Friday night, where they remain at the time of writing behind doors barricaded with furniture.

The building is due to be used for exams this week.

The Manchester march, which is frequently one of the biggest outside London, was led by a line of children holding hands and wearing T-shirts which together read “Stop killing children in Gaza.”

Police removed zionist counter-protesters who had formed a line across Oxford Street to block the march.

John Nicholson of Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine, which brings together a dozen Palestine support groups, told the Morning Star: “Palestinian children are pretty much on every march and have spoken at our rallies. It’s tremendous having them with us.”

The Manchester student protesters, in common with those at more than 20 university protest camps in Britain, are demanding that their universities break academic links with Israel and divest from firms supplying Israel with weapons.

“Several dozen” students occupying Whitworth Hall are also demanding the withdrawal of a threat of disciplinary action against protesters by university authorities.

The occupiers said: “The university must realise that targeting student activists with disciplinary action will not dissuade protesters.

“We are witnessing a genocide and nothing that the university can threaten us with compares to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

“The student body has already voted overwhelmingly in favour of boycotts, divestment and sanctions and our movement is only growing.”

The furthest-flung regular Saturday Palestine protest in Britain was staged by Orkney Friends of Palestine, which mounts a weekly vigil outside St Magnus Cathedral in the islands’ capital, Kirkwall.